


Shell Game

by Giddygeek



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M, Pining, Sexswap, Sharing a Bed, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 11:19:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17661581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Giddygeek/pseuds/Giddygeek
Summary: Shell game: a game involving sleight of hand, in which three inverted cups or nutshells are moved about, and contestants must spot which is the one with a pea or other object underneath.Or, Quentin can’t believe he never thought to ask if there was a magical time in Fillory when people swapped bodies with the last person they slept with.





	Shell Game

**Author's Note:**

> The title definition in the summary is from Google Dictionary.
> 
> This story does involve bodyswapping. Sometimes the swapping happens across sexes, in which cases characters generally use their preferred pronouns from the canon.
> 
> In terms of timeline, this comes after A Life in the Day and then goes somewhere between mildly and wildly off-course.
> 
> Many thanks to Drunktuesdays, MissPamela, and Janet Carter for beta reading, and to my TL for their assistance with notes!

Quentin’s bedroom in Fillory was always too warm. The heavy, light-blocking curtains were cursed—

“Do you mean, like, bespelled?” Quentin had asked Tick, when they were choosing rooms in the wing of the castle designated for them. Quentin had lost the coin toss tournament, of course, and was stuck with the room no one else wanted.

“No,” Tick said, entirely unconcerned as he crushed whatever hope Quentin might have nourished for _one easy thing_ in Fillory. “Cursed almost a thousand years ago, your majesty. The magic will hold a little while longer, I should think. Certainly until the end of _your_ reign.”

Quentin crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his chin up. “Uh. I might reign longer than you think.”

Tick looked at him.

Quentin ducked his head. “Yeah, I’ll just, okay I guess? You’re sure Eliot took the last available, or maybe Alice would trade—Tick, where are you—Tick! I am one of your kings, you know. Tick!”

—which meant they couldn’t be opened, and his room was always as dark as a cave.

So when Quentin rolled over one morning and golden sunlight washed over his face, he blinked awake, confused. His body was pleasantly weighted down by a mountain of blankets, but he hadn’t been able to sleep under more than a sheet in weeks, not without waking up drenched in sweat. The bed linens were soft. He’d fallen asleep on sheets made of coarse white linen that kept remaking itself on his bed every evening, no matter if he tried to change them—physically or magically—in the morning.

And everywhere he looked, he saw lengths of fabric draped from the ceiling to the floor. Each one was a different color, all of them so fine that they were nearly transparent. The sunlight shone through them like they were panels of stained glass.

It was nice, all of it. Comfortable. Nothing was cursed. Everything was beautiful.

It was nothing like his room at all.

Quentin had woken up in this bed before though, a week ago. And a few weeks before that. A few nights before _that_. Also, memorably, twice one hot, lazy, morning at the end of the Fillorian summer season. It wasn’t his bed, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. He didn’t panic at the feel of the blankets or the sight of the draped fabric. The problem wasn’t the room.

The problem was that he didn’t remember anything which might have happened to him since he’d fallen asleep in his own bed. Plus, he was less sticky and sore than he’d been the _last_ time he’d woken up in _this_ bed, which was either a good thing or a bad thing, but he wasn’t sure which.

Quentin pushed himself up against the pillows. The other side of the bed was empty. The bedding lay smooth, untouched. “Eliot?” he called.

Silence. Quentin’s heart pounded in his chest.

Or someone’s heart was pounding in someone’s chest, anyway.

At the sound of himself speaking with someone else’s voice, Quentin looked down at his body, at the endless miles of himself sprawled naked in between the smooth, soft sheets, under the piles of rich quilts embroidered with golden thread; at the neatly-groomed hair stretching from his nipples down the lean, lanky expanse of his torso. He shuddered, nausea washing over him in cold waves that raised the hair on his skin.

Not his hair. Not his skin. This wasn’t his room. This wasn’t his _body_.

Quentin slid out of the bed and dragged a blanket from the pile to drape around himself. “Eliot?” he called again, more urgently. If he was in Eliot’s room and Eliot’s body, where was Eliot? Was Eliot all right? And where was _he_? Where was Quentin; not his mind, obviously, but his body; where was his _body_?

He threw open the door of Eliot’s room and instantly recoiled. He—Eliot—bounced off the doorframe. Quentin wasn’t graceful to begin with; add an extra mile, approximately, of arm and leg, and he was as clumsy as a baby deer.

A stranger with shaggy, copper-red hair stood on Eliot’s doorstep. His arm was stretched out, as if he’d been reaching for Eliot’s door before Quentin had barreled out and almost directly into him.

The stranger’s dark eyes narrowed as he watched Quentin struggle to balance himself and his blanket without crashing to the floor. “Oh, this is rich,” he said. “Q, stop trying to protect my modesty, I’ve obviously seen it all before.”

“Uh,” Quentin said. He stopped fighting with the blanket and leaned against the wall, blinking. “El—Eliot?”

“In the flesh,” the stranger said, spreading his arms. He was shorter than Quentin; or, he was shorter than Eliot, which meant he was currently shorter than Quentin, but maybe a little taller than Quentin’s body, which made Quentin’s head hurt, which meant that Eliot’s head hurt.

Fuck, Quentin thought, dizzy.

The stranger put a hand on his arm when Quentin swayed. Quentin looked down at him. His eyes were a rich brown, almost black, under thick, wild brows. His hair was long and shaggy. He had darker skin than Quentin would have expected from a redhead, clear and unlined, flushed over his high cheekbones. He was beautiful, but he couldn’t have looked less like Eliot if he tried, except for how he pursed his lips exactly the way Eliot did when Quentin had said something Eliot found naïve or ridiculous.

“Well,” Eliot corrected himself, “in someone’s flesh. There’s clearly been a magical hiccup of some kind. I wanted to see what had happened to me before I found Tick and demanded a report.”

“Here you are,” Quentin said faintly. “Safe and sound.”

“Sound, at least,” Eliot said. “Do you need to sit down? I could get hurt if you pass out, you know.”

“I’m not going to pass out,” Quentin said, leaning against the wall so he wouldn’t pass out. “I’m just wondering, if you’re there and I’m here, where am I?”

Quentin and the stranger with Eliot’s expressions—Quentin with Eliot’s body and Eliot with a stranger’s body—Quentin and Eliot looked at each other. Then, with Quentin’s blanket wrap flapping and tripping him up every few steps, they scrambled together towards Quentin’s room.

~

“This is like a fairy tale,” Eliot said. “The sleeping prince, alone in his curse’d bower.”

Quentin’s body lay in Quentin’s bed. He wasn’t in the pose of a fairy tale prince, peacefully on his back, arms at his sides like a corpse in its coffin—like Sleeping Beauty. He was on his stomach, one leg drawn up, his face mashed blankly into his pillow. His pillow had a drool spot. The room was dark, and too warm, and everything seemed entirely normal, except for the fact that Quentin had never been outside of his body watching it sleep before.

It was enough to make Quentin sit down hard on his one uncomfortable chair. Dust rose around him. He bent forward, his elbows on his knees, and tried to take a deep breath.

“I’m in a coma,” he wheezed.

Eliot poked his shoulder. “A magical coma. There’s always a way out of those, Q. Maybe you just need true love’s kiss or something.”

“True love’s kiss.” Quentin sank lower, forehead almost on his knees. Eliot’s knees. He missed having his curtain of long hair to hide behind. “I’m a goner.”

“Ah, I wondered how this little situation had worked itself out,” a woman said from the doorway they’d left open behind them in their mad scramble to Quentin’s bed. “Good morning, your majesties. It is I, Tick Pickwick, leader of the High Council.”

Quentin sat up. He folded his hands in front of him; they were trembling too much to be regal and authoritative. Not that he was ever regal and authoritative, but people might have different expectations for Eliot than for him.

He and Eliot watched the woman as she took a few steps into the room. She was tall, with dark skin, and tightly-curled black hair spilling down her back. She wore muted, forest-y colors, pine and leaf, like Tick did. But she had accented herself with glittering jewelry, and a gold lace cape. She raised her eyebrows at them in a familiar way, her hands clasped behind her back.

“Oh…kay,” Eliot said. He waved his hand at her. “If you’re Tick, who is _that_?”

Tick looked down at herself. “Still Tick Pickwick,” he said, with a raised brow. “Although before you is the image of my lady wife, Vic Pickwick, of course. Unlike some, we are quite faithful to the terms of the Worship Moon, you know.”

Quentin looked blankly at Tick, then at Eliot. “The terms of the what? The Worship Moon? I’ve never—have you—”

Eliot shrugged.

“So we don’t know, actually,” Quentin said. He took a deep breath through his nose, out through his mouth. Tick knew what this was. It might be okay. “Maybe you could. You might want to fill us in?”

“What King Quentin means is _start talking_ ,” Eliot said, crossing his arms over his chest. He should have been less intimidating than Eliot, being shorter and sort of soft-looking and naked, but with the intensity of all of Eliot’s gravitas behind him, he was powerful enough to make Tick rush to obey.

Quentin tried copying his body language, crossing his arms over his chest. He punched himself in the bicep and gave up.

“Well,” Tick said, in the tones of a kindergarten teacher addressing particularly ignorant children; so, much like usual, but in a slightly higher pitch. “Once every seventy years, all of Fillory celebrates the Worship Moon. From the rise of the seventh new moon until the waxing of the next full moon, the Lover’s Moon, every Fillorian who has engaged in, ahem, acts of sexual congress, finds that he or she or they have transformed into the fleshly vessel of, well.” He gestured at them. “As you see.”

“Transformed into the fleshly vessel,” Quentin said, sounding out each word on its own. “You mean—”

“You swap bodies with someone you’ve fucked,” Eliot said sharply. He raised an eyebrow at Tick. “ _Any_ person you’ve fucked?”

“Oh, well, if your last partner in sexual congress was a centaur, or a dryad, you may find yourself transformed thusly.” Tick coughed. “If what you meant by person was human, well. We’re flexible. The centaurs disapprove, of course, but—”

“Your _last_ partner.” Quentin slumped back in his dusty chair, rearranging his blanket across his lap, looking up at Eliot through his eyelashes. “So I guess that means I—but you?”

Eliot looked at him, unashamed. “Well, as you said yourself, it’s not as if we were starting a relationship. You said I didn’t have to worry about being exclusive.”

“No, I know,” Quentin said. “I guess I’m just surprised. I mean, that was _last week_.”

“And this week, a very attractive person in the market asked me for a favor,” Eliot said. “And since we weren’t _exclusive_ \--”

“Yeah, I get it,” Quentin said, waving him off. He turned back to Tick, who was watching them with as much fascination and distaste as ever. He took a deep breath. “Okay. Tick. You may not have noticed, but I’m kind of freaked out about this?”

Tick tilted his head. “Freaked out?”

Quentin stood on shaky legs, dragging handfuls of sheet around himself. “You know, freaked out. Like, distressed. Like, I appear to be in a _coma_ while my consciousness walks around in another body, and that has me _kind of stressed_?”

Tick averted his gaze while Quentin dealt with the sheet. “I’m sorry, it’s just that this level of…freaked out seems to happen to you so regularly.”

Quentin blew out a breath and reached up to push his hair out of his face, except his hair wasn’t in his face, because it was Eliot’s hair. “Because Fillory is so fucked up. _This_ is so fucked up,” he muttered. “But it would really help me out, like, if you could just get to the point. If you could tell me one thing. If I’m in the High King’s body, and he’s in—uh, that guy’s body—who’s supposed to be in my body?”

“Ah,” Tick said. “This happens occasionally. Some foolish young hussy—pardon me, High King Eliot, I don’t mean to imply—well, anyway, some foolish hussy fornicates with someone who fornicates with someone else, paying no mind to the moon, and the end result is as you see here.” He gestured to Quentin’s body. “The chain of possession, as Ember and Umber call it, loses a link.”

“No offense taken,” Eliot said lazily. “I _am_ a young hussy.”

Tick ignored him, turning his lecture to Quentin. “Ember and Umber meant to encourage fidelity through chaos, of course. The Worship Moon is a time of love and romance, the glorious appreciation of your mate’s body with your own. But it is also, for some, a time of disaster.”

They all looked at Quentin’s empty body. Quentin’s back rose with his breathing. He was snoring a little, a quiet whistle out his nose, which was squashed into his pillow.

“Usually it works out all right at the rise of the Lover’s Moon,” Tick said, unconvincingly.

“Usually?” Quentin asked.

“Well, you’ve met Ember and Umber,” Tick said, which made Quentin’s chest clench tight with fear.

Eliot’s body didn’t seem to _do_ panic quite the same way Quentin’s did. It was almost as if Eliot had anxiety peaks, but at a third the magnitude of Quentin’s. But he had met Ember and Umber, and Eliot had met Ember and Umber. Between them, Quentin mind and Eliot’s body worked up a good facsimile of total panic at the thought. He sat down again, a hand pressed to his sternum.

“Ember and Umber are too dead to fix this,” he said through numb lips.

“Quite true!” Tick clapped his hands together, giving them a slightly wild smile. “But I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, your highness. Now, I must be off; glorious appreciation is the prime responsibility of those transformed by the Worship Moon, you know. My wife would hate to waste a minute of her appreciation time with my, well,” and he hurried out of the room as Quentin took a step towards him, saying, “Tick, don’t you dare, Tick!”

Tick waved without looking back, and closed the door behind him with a decisive click.

Quentin clenched his hands on the arms of his chair and stared at his empty body. He looked so blank without himself animating his own features. Did he always look this dumb when he slept? No wonder sleeping with other people never worked out like he hoped.

He took a deep breath and exhaled, soft and slow the way a handful of therapists had made him do a thousand times. But for once, it noticeably helped. He could feel Eliot’s body relax a little, just enough that Quentin stopped feeling like he might keel over on the spot. Was this how it felt to have your anxiety under control? If so, Quentin didn’t think he ever had, not once in his whole, potentially short life.

Quentin licked his lips. “How likely do you think it is that I end up on the good side of that _usually_?”

Eliot put a hand on his shoulder. Quentin looked down at it. The stranger’s hand was broad and square, with surprisingly hairy knuckles. In Eliot’s body, being touched felt a little different; there was no subconscious urge to sidle sideways and away. Quentin put his hand over Eliot’s, tentatively, and held on.

“We’ll figure it out, Q.” Eliot squeezed his shoulder and sighed. “Somehow we always do.”

~

“So, what’s his name?” Quentin asked. He pulled a sweater out of his wardrobe and tossed it to Eliot, who was already wearing a pair of his pants, his socks, and his best boots; Quentin’s other boots had been rejected with a grim sideways look.

“Hmm?” Eliot shimmied into the sweater, tugging it down around his hips. It hung a little tight over his shoulders. The stranger was close to the same height as Quentin but a little more broad across the chest, narrow at the hip. He looked better in Quentin’s clothes than Quentin did.

He looked a lot better awake and dressed than Quentin did at the moment, limply asleep like a puppet in his bed.

“Oh, this is, hmm. Something fae. Trentrick? Trentwright? Trentsley? It was my mostly my name getting shouted, to be honest. Trentbottom?”

Quentin stared at him. “Well, the Trent part seems consistent. Is that what, do you want me to call you Trent while you’re, you know, in there?”

“God no.” Eliot propped his booted foot up on Quentin’s chair and tugged the laces open a little. “His feet are bigger than yours,” he explained smugly. “I’ll keep calling you Quentin, and you keep calling me Eliot, unless there are some sort of magical shenanigans afoot which require we be in disguise as each other. Try not to slouch so much.”

Quentin stood up straight. The blanket still wrapped around his hips immediately sagged.

“Well, it might take a little practice for you to be me,” Eliot said, even more smug. “I do have a very particular charisma, rare to find and difficult to replicate.”

Quentin rolled his eyes and reached up to brush his hair back. Eliot’s hair was too short and wild with sleep, though, and he just ended up tousling it more.

“Of course, even with you bumbling around in there, I am quite beautiful,” Eliot said. His eyes—Trentick’s eyes—were gleaming with appreciation as he gave himself a thorough examination. Quentin swallowed hard, dizzy again as his brain tried to sort out the visuals of himself being looked at like that by Eliot, of himself and Eliot in bed, in this lifetime and their other lifetime, while also trying to imagine Eliot and Trention up against a wall in the market and—

“Oh, keep your sheet on,” Eliot said, smiling. “For once, I’m more interested in something else. No one told us, so I bet Margo wasn’t prepared for this either. Let’s go find out whose body she’s trapped in. I bet he’s hot.”

“Or he’s her dead almost-husband,” Quentin pointed out. “I wouldn’t put the concept of sex zombies beyond Ember and Umber.” He let Eliot drag him out into the hall; anywhere was better than his own room, his body trapped in the bed with all the dignity of a sex zombie, but more drool.

Speaking of dignity, he thought, winding the sheet around his waist tighter in his fist as they headed into more populated areas of the castle, “Hey, Eliot, can we go back to the royal wing and get me some pants? Eliot, pants?”

Eliot tossed a dismissive look over his—Trentill’s—trim but muscular shoulder. “I’m sure I have a pair in Margo’s room,” he said, hauling Quentin through a ballroom Quentin wasn’t sure he’d even seen before. There were serving girls working at the fireplace in the corner. Quentin gave them an uncomfortable smile and a half-salute; he was pretty sure he heard them tittering behind his back as he and Eliot crossed into an outer hall.

“Margo’s room is back in the royal wing,” Quentin pointed out.

“Her bedroom is,” Eliot said. “But if she’d been in her bedroom when this happened, you shrieking down the hallway would have gotten her attention. No, I bet my girl picked up last night.” He stopped short and raised an eyebrow at Quentin. “Are you ready to see…Margo’s _bang_ room?”

He threw back a wall covering with a flourish worthy of himself in his own body, but slightly lower to the ground; the tapestry hit Quentin in the face. He grabbed for it, and his sheet started slipping down his hips. Eliot muttered a soft phrase, too quiet for Quentin to make out given the weight of tapestry on his head, and a cool breeze hit Quentin on the exposed skin from his belly to his throat, raising sudden goosebumps.

“Bambi, you _scamp_ ,” he heard Eliot say as he unwound the fabric on his head as best he could without losing his sheet. He finally freed himself from the tapestry and peered into—into Margo’s bangroom, apparently; a hidden space with a huge bed, a swaying chandelier, and a phenomenally beautiful man, like a Renaissance painting of a well-endowed god, sliding his dick deep into Margo from behind.

“Oh no, you assholes do not get to ruin this for me,” Margo said, while the guy in her body tossed her head and moaned.

It was funny, Quentin thought, trying desperately not to look but also looking, that despite the deep rasp of her voice, there was no question who was speaking. Margo punctuated a few thrusts by muttering, “Get out. Get out. Get the fuck out.”

“I’d say you’re getting quite the fuck in,” Eliot said. “All right, all right, Bambi; I’m just going to get Quentin those pants that I left here that time with the thing,” and he was tossing a pile of clothing on the floor, casually rifling through it.

Quentin was left to stare at Margo’s breasts swaying and Margo’s body thrusting, then at the wall, then back, furiously embarrassed but unable to resist.

“There was a whole fifth bedroom but I still got the cursed one,” he complained to the wall.

“ _Bang_ room,” Margo grunted. “I traded Eliot for the wardrobe.”

Eliot popped back up with—God, was that black crushed velvet; it totally was—and crossed back to the door hidden under the tapestry, smacking Margo’s ass—the guy’s sculpted ass—on his way past.

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” he said. “Come find us when you’re done!”

“Okay, bye-bye, fuck off,” Margo said, throwing her head back, her hips stuttering. Quentin ducked back out into the hallway, Eliot following him and whispering again, just as Margo started to roar.

The sound cut off abruptly. Quentin huddled behind the dusty tapestry, too close to Eliot, feeling a little breathless. Margo didn’t always do it for him, and men rarely did, but he wasn’t made of stone--in fact, in Eliot’s body, he was definitely made of flesh that felt heavy and full and languid; Quentin didn’t know if he’d ever felt languid before, but what else could this be?

“Well, I’ll be using that image later,” Eliot said, smiling up at him with a rakishly cocked brow and twinkling eyes.

It was so weird to be so much taller than Eliot, for Eliot to be wearing some other face and yet be entirely himself; to have Eliot’s senses perception of things, slightly different than his own, and maybe some of Eliot’s desires. He felt himself swaying closer to Eliot, leaning down as if to kiss him. He realized too late that he had the angle wrong, that he was fighting Eliot’s muscle memory of kissing, and he was losing.

“Oof, no,” Eliot said, pushing him back. “Sorry, Q, but surprisingly enough, you-as-me smells terrible. Did my own breath reek to Trentsauce when I was fucking him? It didn’t seem to bother him, but—oh well, his problem. Here, put these pants on. Since Margo is occupied, I suppose that you and I will have to carry her share of the work.”

“What work,” Quentin said. He hesitated for a moment, aware of the way Eliot’s dick had plumped up, and then he dropped the sheet—it really wasn’t anything Eliot hadn’t seen before—and slipped into the black crushed velvet pants.

They’d looked silly in Eliot’s hand, but they felt amazing on his ass and thighs. Plus, Quentin thought, glancing down, they _looked_ fantastic. Eliot’s long, lean body somehow elevated the stupid pants from clownish to debauched.

When he looked up again, Eliot was watching him. He might have pushed Quentin away and said he smelled, but his pupils were huge and his cheeks were flushed; in some way, at least, Quentin in his body was doing it for him.

Or maybe just his body, Quentin thought. He couldn’t see how his own awkward clumsiness would add anything to Eliot’s aesthetic appeal.

But Eliot’s body was doing it for him, too; it looked good, even from Quentin’s new, strange angle; and it felt good, every sensation rich and more. It was a positive feedback loop that would have been easy to get lost in, so lost, if Eliot hadn’t pushed him out from behind the tapestry and back into the hall.

“The work of getting you back into your own body, of course,” Eliot said. He put his hand on Quentin’s back, still bare, to guide him along. Quentin looked down at him and found Eliot looking up, hazel eyes gleaming under dark lashes. How often had Eliot flirted with people taller than him, to be so good at it?

“Believe it or not, I do feel somewhat responsible for your current condition. Oh, not that,” he said, following Quentin’s automatic, darting gaze down at Eliot’s groin, moving distractingly under the black velvet. “No, your current, hmm, displacement in the time-space continuum? I’d like to help you out if I can.”

“You are responsible for it,” Quentin pointed out. “You fucked Trentston without thinking about what might happen to me.”

“I didn’t know about the Worship Moon!” Eliot said, defensive. “And we weren’t exclusive! I said that I _felt_ responsible, not that I was.”

“Regardless.” Quentin shook his head. “This is, this is the magical equivalent of an STD—maybe a deadly one, even—and you’re the transmission vector, Eliot.”

“Hmm,” Eliot said. “Well, that’s just mean of you, Q. Rude, even.” He dropped his hand from Quentin’s back and strode along more quickly; Quentin stared after him. Eliot said over his shoulder, “Just for that, you get all the grimy books. The grimoires. I hope the library has one made of bat skin and newt’s blood.”

“It has five,” Quentin said with a sigh, and he followed Eliot to the library.

~

Seven spellbooks, three grimoires, a digression into topology and a snack later, Quentin still didn’t have an answer. Or a shirt. Or shoes.

“I’m going to take these back to your room,” he told Eliot, gathering an armful of the less fragile books. A previous attempt to leave with an ancient volume of Fillorian magical poetry had not gone well. The crumbling, delicate book had disappeared in a shower of sparks and flowers when Alice crossed the doorway out of the library.

“The library is under a preservation spell, of course,” Tick had told them with a sniff when they reported the destruction. “Some of the older, more fragile books—which, if I may call an important fact to the attention of your majesties, are impossible to duplicate—might experience such damage if removed from the library’s protection. Take special heed of books of weaponry and defense. They tend to expire more violently than the poor books of poetry.”

He had taken the flowers from Alice with reverent care, and set them in a crystal vase, where they’d remained since. They smelled great and never wilted, but Alice had always felt bad about the book.

Eliot looked up. He’d curled himself into one of the library’s overstuffed chairs after their lunch break, taking advantage of Trentling’s relatively compact frame; Quentin had found himself sprawling on the ornate, uncomfortable red satin couch almost involuntarily, his limbs too long for scrunching. The green satin of Eliot’s chair made his eyes stand out and his hair gleam, but looking at him made Quentin feel a little sad, homesick. He found himself missing Eliot, even with both Eliot’s body and his mind in the room.

“Q, please. Don’t deprive me of the joy of watching myself study,” Eliot said. “If I’d known how good it made me look, I’d have done it more often. My hands are fantastic with a book in them.”

“I want a shirt,” Quentin complained. “I want shoes. I’m cold. That means you’re cold. Do you really want me mistreating your body like this?"

“Hmm. No. But I’ll come with you. I also don’t want you mistreating my body by dressing it badly.” Eliot unfolded himself from the green chair and grabbed his own stack of books. He hadn’t been there when Alice murdered the poetry book, but he remembered to grab the more modern, replaceable volumes, Quentin noticed with relief. He sailed past Quentin to the door. “Oh, I know. I’ll find you a few rings. I wish we had a photographer—do you think the castle has an official portrait artist?”

Quentin followed him. One of the books in his stack smoked a little and he winced; he didn’t want to find out what happened to a book of Fillorian love spells turned into when it died. “Are you sure you want a magical portrait?”

“I have heard that portraits in Fillory do steal a little bit of your soul,” Eliot said. He snagged a basket of fruits and breads that had appeared on a stand next to the tapestry which hid the door to Margo’s bangroom and juggled it into his arms. “I wouldn’t want to be the person who finds out that they didn’t have enough to lose. Remind me to take some studying selfies when we’re back on Earth, though.”

Quentin ducked his head, smiling. Eliot’s casual vanity shouldn’t have been charming; he hadn’t always found it charming. But getting to know Eliot better, realizing how much of a mask Eliot wore to keep people from realizing how bright and powerful he actually was, had made the vanity easier to tolerate. To like. To admire, even.

Back in Eliot’s room, Eliot dropped the food basket and tossed his stack of books on his bed, which had made itself since Quentin had scrambled out of it. The castle had servants for many tasks which couldn’t be automated with magic, but beds in the royal chambers managed themselves, for the most part.

Or like Quentin’s, they _mis_ managed themselves. He hoped his body didn’t get a rash from spending too much time with his sheets.

“Hey, do you think we can move me?” he asked Eliot, setting his own stack of books down on the bed in a more orderly stack. “I mean, we’re going to have to at some point. Right? I’m going to need to sleep somewhere.”

“Here, of course,” Eliot said, striding to his wardrobe. He threw the double doors wide open and they spread along the wall, unfolding to a space eight times the size of the wardrobe; he’d fought Margo for that wardrobe when they’d first moved into the castle, piously claiming he needed the space for Fen, before that relationship had flickered out into something new.

Quentin tried to catch the clothes Eliot threw at him, but they were all slippery. He let them pile up on the floor and frowned at Eliot. “Where will you sleep? Do you know where Trenterson lives? What if he’s using his bed?”

Eliot paused, a long strip of sparkling white leather in his hand. “This is fascinating. I always thought it was just that your face looked like you had the mental processing power of three gerbils, but here you are with my face, looking the same way. Wow. No, Quentin, we can both sleep here.” He turned back to the wardrobe and said, “It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

“It’s four gerbils, actually,” Quentin said. He caught the shoe that flew at his face; Eliot hadn’t thrown it very hard, probably not wanting to break his own nose. “I’m not saying that I’m opposed to, uh, sleeping with you—letting you sleep with you, I guess, I don’t—but do you think Trentlington would be okay with it?”

“Oh, for—” Eliot threw the other shoe into the pile at Quentin’s feet and strode toward him, chin up, dark brows drawn together. He poked Quentin in the chest and crowded too close. Quentin tried to take a step back but it was like Eliot’s body didn’t know how; he swayed, then leaned into Eliot, looming over him.

Quentin hadn’t realized it felt good to loom, seductive and powerful. No wonder it was one of Eliot’s go-to moves.

“I can’t believe you don’t see how this is ruined for me,” Eliot bitched, poking harder, clearly not feeling seduced. “The opportunity to sleep with myself? It’s somewhat spoiled by the fact that you’re in there dorking it up, but I could work around that, if I were in your body.”

“You could have been,” Quentin pointed out.

Eliot tilted his head. “Why is the fact that I’m not relentlessly celibate the problem here? You could have slept with someone else, after you made a whole big point of not being exclusive. Or it could be Trentison’s fault; he offered, and then he slept with who knows who else—and he’s the one who knew about the Worship Moon.”

It was so frustrating to have the urge to run his hand through his hair, to pull it back from his face, and only have Eliot’s chaotic waves to work with. “I can’t believe I never thought to ask if there was a magical time when people swapped bodies with the last person they slept with.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “Well, at least now we know. But I can’t make myself take his body for a joyride with someone he doesn’t know, and—no, Quentin. You’re going to sleep here, and I’m going to sleep here, because this is the best room in the castle and my body and I deserve it.”

“My room is fine,” Quentin lied defensively.

“Your room is a cursed pit. Q, this is fine. We’re just going to sleep. I’m not fucking you with someone else’s body,” Eliot said. “That’s just gauche. Plus your breath still smells.”

He bent down and picked up the pile of clothing at their feet, pressing it to Quentin’s chest. “Go clean up,” he said, quirking a smile. “Get dressed. I’ll be here reading Fillorian romance novels when you come back.”

Quentin took the pile of clothing and turned away, surreptitiously running his tongue over his teeth; all right, so he’d forgotten to do whatever grooming it was that made Eliot look like a Regency rake with access to toothpaste, but how bad could it be? He switched all the clothing to one arm and breathed into his cupped hand; didn’t seem that stinky to him—

“Oh,” Eliot said. Quentin looked at him over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at the change in Eliot’s smile, gone soft and, well, really lecherous was the only word. “Feel free to, _you know_ ,” he said, waving a hand to encompass all of Quentin’s body. “Trust me, it’ll be worth it.”

In his own body, Quentin would have blushed fiercely at the suggestion. Eliot’s dick just stirred, interested. “No thank you!” Quentin said, hurrying stiffly to the fancy shower and bath system the Fillorians had worked up at their High King’s request. If Eliot had drawn a line, had decided to have scruples about not sleeping with Quentin while they were like this, Quentin could draw his own line, could decide not to, to feel free.

“I’ll be in a better mood if you do!” Eliot called after him, a laugh in his voice; Quentin hunched his shoulders and used his free hand to give Eliot the finger before closing the bathroom door firmly behind him.

“If that really worked, you’d be much nicer to be around,” he said to Eliot’s reflection in the elaborate, gold and crystal-framed mirror Eliot had hung over the seashell sink. Then the disorientation of looking at Eliot and hearing Eliot’s voice got to him and he turned away, dropping Eliot’s clothes on the windowsill. He started the shower. “Feel free,” he muttered, stepping under the water. “Yeah, right.”

~

His resolve lasted for three minutes.

Hair washed with one of Eliot’s fifteen jars of “unguent: washing, cedar and unicorn musk,” “unguent: conditioning, sea salt and mermaid’s milk,” “unguent: moisturizing, honey and the tears of an old man,” etc., Quentin contemplated the rest of the job.

He’d recognized the smell of the cedar and unicorn musk—weird to have a name for the smell of Eliot’s hair while they were in Fillory; weird to know, almost instinctively, how it was different at Brakebills—but was that supposed to go on his body, too? He cast back in his memory, thinking about the last time he’d noticed any particular smell to Eliot’s skin, but that was a straight shot back to thinking about the last time he’d had sex with Eliot.

They’d had a rough day in the reception hall, with Eliot being asked progressively stupider questions about minor activities of the Fillorians; this person’s goat ate that centaur’s sheets; this talking bear had left fish guts on a big rock on that Fillorian’s property; on and on that way, for eternity.

“Let’s get just absolutely wasted,” Eliot murmured in his ear, “conferring” with Quentin about the question of who rightfully owned a particular lamb carcass. Quentin glanced at the complainants: a wolf, a fairy, and twin sisters who were busy squabbling with the wolf and the fairy and also each other. He nodded, then jumped in his chair when Eliot brushed his lips across Quentin’s cheekbone as he drew back. When he turned to look at Eliot, startled, the faint smile Eliot gave him was familiar. It was an invitation Quentin had accepted a lifetime ago, and then again a month ago.

That night, Quentin had spent enough time sucking Eliot’s cock that he could remember the shape of it in his mouth. It was only fair, he’d told himself, considering that Eliot had given him the kind of long, slow, torturous blowjob that Quentin had thought only happened in porn, where there were fluffers and long breaks and an endless supply of drugs and bottled water. Fairness was important. Reciprocation. Reciprocation within the limits of Quentin’s ability, at least. Their blowjobs really didn’t compare.

Possibly Eliot used sex magic, but Quentin kind of thought he’d consider it undignified. Less dignified than drooling around Quentin’s cock anyway, eyes locked to his, Quentin’s fingers skating shakily through his tousled hair, cedar and unicorn musk—

Maybe memory was sex magic.

Remembering that night, the blowjobs, the way he’d passed out asleep on Eliot’s shoulder, Quentin reached again for a bottle he’d set aside earlier, one labeled “unguent: washing, rose water and snail dreams.” Yeah, that was the smell of Eliot’s skin, warm with sweat and sleep.

Of course he was hard, he thought. Eliot’s cock was remembering Quentin’s mouth; Quentin’s mind was remembering the sight of himself coming in Eliot’s hand; Quentin vaguely thought he could get Eliot’s body to come untouched, just from the crossed wires of memory. He could ignore it, he tried to ignore it, pouring the rose water and snail dreams soap on a washcloth and diligently scrubbing his arms and collarbones. But there were Eliot’s freckled shoulders, which Quentin had found himself biting a few times, Eliot deep inside him. The tail of a washcloth brushing his nipple was enough to tighten his belly.

Feel free.

Quentin washed until the soap was gone, then reached for “unguent: slick,” which he was already familiar with, unscented and unflavored and clear but, well, slick.

Trust Eliot to keep some in the shower, he thought, vaguely amused as he slid his hand down the cut of his hip, across his belly, soft hair tickling his palm. Eliot probably had shower sex all the time; Quentin had only done it the once, and come to think of it, there had been some transformation involved then, but—

But then Eliot’s cock was in his hand. He’d felt that before, from a different angle, with his own hand, broader but shorter. He gasped and hung his head, watching; a deep breath trembling in and out of Eliot’s belly; the red flush of Eliot’s cock against the lighter skin of his hands, pale but golden underneath, like Eliot could spend as much time lounging on beds and couches as he wanted, but his skin remembered the beating sunshine of farm work. The slick washed away under the hot water, but slowly, and Quentin’s orgasm was rising fast. He rubbed his thumb against the head of Eliot’s cock, pressing into his slit lightly, just a little, the way he remembered Eliot liked, and felt his balls drawing up tense and tight.

Six minutes into his shower, Quentin leaned his arm against the wall and braced himself, panting, wringing the last of the orgasm out of Eliot’s cock—his cock now, for a while, he thought; how weird to have started thinking of every other part of Eliot’s body as his, except for this one thing—fully aware that Eliot was going to know what he’d done, and make fun of him for it.

Eliot had been right, though, he thought, watching the water wash away the evidence of his transgression. He _did_ feel better.

~

Quentin came out of the shower dressed in Eliot’s clothes and doing his best to wear Eliot’s holier-than-thou smirk, to fight fire with fire, to hold his own against—

Eliot looked up and there it was, the smirk, perfectly recognizable even on Trenterino’s face.

“Don’t say a single word,” Quentin said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Don’t try to wear my face like that,” Eliot said, raising an eyebrow at him. “It doesn’t suit you, Q. Oh, don’t pout, either. Come over here. While you were busy taking my poor body for a spin, I found something useless but interesting.”

Quentin sat beside Eliot on the bed. Eliot held a small book out to him triumphantly; it was one of the pedantic Fillorian histories, like an encyclopedia of a magical world, but usually boring. This one had an ornate red and gold binding, though, and it was open to a page which looked, at first glance, like a family tree, or a diagram of Fibonacci’s rabbits.

Two human-like figures stood at the top of the page, connected by a shape that was sort of like an arrow and sort of like genitalia. But a second line drawn from one of the figures led down to another shape, and that shape had arrows to a few other shapes, and one of those had a line down to another row. The figures crawled down the page in a jumble of lines and arrows until a final line at the bottom led back to the figure at the top of the wild maze; the other figure, alone since the start, had a dashed line of question marks trailing off into nothingness halfway down the page.

Quentin flipped back a page for context, skimming quickly. “The Worship Moon,” he murmured, “a feast for the senses…love’s first wish—really?—the comingling of two souls as…often seamless but….” He flipped forward, past the family tree. The fucking tree, maybe.

“This is where we start to get a bit more than Tick told us,” Eliot said. He pointed a few paragraphs down. “'Infrequently, the abandoned body is left uninhabited,’” he read. “’Two weeks later, as the Lover’s Moon rises, an unfaithful partner may find that, due to the imbalance of romantic humours, their faithful paramour rests on in peaceful slumber, unwoken by any power of magic or love, unresisting the sweet call of the truest lover of all, Death—'”

Quentin slammed the book shut. His heart was racing again.

Eliot glanced up at him, guileless. “What’s the matter, Q?”

“I’m a dead man,” Quentin said, staring at Eliot’s panels of colored silk. “I have two weeks to live. ‘The truest lover, Death,’ oh my God, I’m going to get that tattooed on your balls before I go.”

“I fail to see what you’re freaking out about.” Eliot shrugged. “The book says that’s only a problem for people with _an imbalance of romantic humours_. But you and I have perfectly balanced humours, right? No relationship, no exclusivity, no feelings we haven’t expressed?”

The sun had almost set. The silks decorating Eliot’s room hung still and quiet, a rainbow of colors beautiful even when they weren’t illuminated. Eliot would light candles later, and the shadows and light would make the fabric beautiful again. Quentin would lie down in Eliot’s bed, in Eliot’s body, next to a stranger, while his own body rotted against rough cotton, alone, lonely, unloving, unloved.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Right. Right, I’ll be fine. Unbalanced romantic humors. Haha.”

“Ladies,” Margo crowed from the doorway.

Quentin jumped up, startled anew by Margo’s size and muscularity, the way she leaned against the doorframe the way she usually would, the way her emerald green silk shirt displayed as much firm cleavage as any of her own clothes would have. She might have been wearing one of her own shirts, actually, given how tight and low-cut it seemed to be.

“Tonight we feast, am I right? I’m starving.” She sauntered into Eliot’s room, reached into the basket of fruits and breads that Eliot had stolen from her pedestal, and tossed an apple high in the air, eyebrow raised. “Turns out someone stole my food. Which, after a hard…day…like I’ve just had—”

Quentin sat back. “ _You’ve_ had a hard day? I’m in a coma!”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “You are not in a coma. You’re sitting in my very nice body and whining about it, which is not the same thing.” He looked at Margo, who stood with her hip cocked, one arm crossed across her stomach, her other hand holding her apple. “Quentin’s body is empty of all personality because I’m a slut,” Eliot told her.

Margo raised her other eyebrow. “What does you being a slut have to do with Quentin being Quentin?”

“I have plenty of personality,” Quentin said, stung. “I like things. I hate other things. I have friends. Do you care at all about the part where my body is empty?”

Eliot stood and reached up to pat him on the shoulder. “Quentin’s freaking out, but it will be fine,” he told Margo. “Because Quentin and I don’t have any kind of unbalanced romantic humours.”

Margo took another bite of her apple. “Oh, well, in that case,” she said dryly, and turned away to the door. Her hips slinked, despite the fact that they were absurdly high off the ground, perched atop legs the size of tree trunks. “Time for dinner. Are you ready for a bacchanal, because I have ordered five of everything, and I’m willing to let you two split a plate here and there.”

“I’m ready,” Eliot said cheerfully. He used his grip on Quentin’s shoulder to propel him toward the door. “Hey, Margo, where’s whoever’s in your body?”

“I wore me out. We’ll probably see him tomorrow afternoon.” Margo tossed her apple core back into the basket from the doorway; it turned into another apple, fresh and red, as soon as it crossed the rim. “I tried to leave some food, but you guys can’t not be dicks, no matter whose bodies you’re in.”

“You don’t even eat carbs when you’re in your own body,” Eliot said, dismissive. “I don’t believe for a second that you were going to let him loose in there with a basket of bread.”

“Well, no. But I’m not exactly in my own body, am I? I’d have stayed for a snack. Big guy like this, I bet he can eat like he’s got two hollow legs,” Margo said, banging a fist on the flat, muscled stomach of the guy’s body. She waggled her eyebrows. “Or three.”

“I don’t know if stuffing someone full of bread counts as the worship you’re supposed to be doing right now,” Eliot said, and he and Margo bickered cheerfully through the halls, confident of their place in the world and their eventual return to it, while Quentin, counting down the minutes until the Lover’s Moon, went along quietly to their feast.

~

Margo did eat like she had three hollow legs, with Eliot egging her on. Quentin picked at his own meal. Things tasted different to Eliot. Quentin liked one of the sweetly spicy fish dishes the Fillorians considered essential to any fancy dinner, but Eliot had always screwed his nose up and turned it down, saying it tasted soapy. Quentin had always thought he was being needlessly dramatic, but the fish did in fact taste like it had been rubbed over a bar of Ivory.

After two determined bites, his eyes locked on Eliot’s, he’d given up and switched to one of the roasts.

Their serving staff was clumsier than usual, made up either of people who didn’t usually work for them in the bodies of their partners who did; or, almost worst, people who did work for them in the bodies of people who didn’t. Muscle memory helped prevent mugs of ale and crystalline goblets of liqueur from spilling into laps, helped keep soups in their tureens, helped cut fine slices of meats instead of great hunks—slightly charred.

Eliot dismissed the staff halfway through the meal. “Bring everything out that’s safe to eat,” he told their butler, a centaur with the fine manners and delicacy of a queen. “We’ll handle the rest.”

 _Handling the rest_ meant Margo and Eliot ate like happy animals, completely not self-conscious and enjoying the way food felt and tasted differently. And when Margo’s third leg was full, they switched to drinking.

Eliot, playing the role of the Champagne King to the hilt, served them golden, syrupy honey ale and sharp little bottles of a thing that wasn’t unlike tequila; goblets of a wine so clear and light that swallowing it felt like breathing mountain air on a cold morning; sips straight from the decanter of something effervescent and sapphire blue that glittered on the tongue.

And while he ate and drank, Quentin brooded.

“If you’re that worried about it, Q, just get in there and go fuck yourself,” Margo said, waving a turkey leg in one hand and a breadstick in the other. She had sauce on her chin and a glazed look in her eye. “Can’t do you any more damage, right? And maybe a little presto-changeo, humpty-dumpty nonsense is just what your problem needs.”

“Creepy.” Quentin waved his hands at her, trying to express exactly how creepy. “Fuck myself? In someone else’s body? While I’m the closest thing to in a coma? Margo, please.”

“Some people would be into it,” Margo said sulkily.

Eliot waved his own turkey leg at her, frowning thoughtfully. The stack of glasses at his elbow almost got knocked over. “It’s a valid idea, Q. And frankly, I could be convinced to give it a go. But believe it or not, I’ve done the research, and it doesn’t work. I read that in a very odd little book. One of the illustrated ones. _It was called Fifty-Nine Pleasurable Pursuits of the Worship Moon._ I’ll be thinking about it in bed later.” He took a bite of turkey, slumping just a little in his chair, suddenly morose. “I think you’ve done fifty-eight of them, Margo. I’m the only person at this table who hasn’t had an orgasm today, did you know that?”

“Really?” Margo leaned toward Quentin, her eyes wide and twinkling. “Tell me more.”

“Or not!” Quentin said, pushing the wine towards Eliot. “Pour, please. No, no telling.”

Serving themselves, plus Quentin beating back Margo’s determined quest for more gossip, stretched their feast late. The candles had melted down by the time Margo and Eliot were sated. Margo sprawled back in her chair with a goblet half-dangling from her long, strong hand. She looked like a hero from the cover of one of the romance novels Quentin had seen at pharmacies and grocery stores back on Earth; like Fabio, if Fabio were young and cool and kind of fae.

“I think I’ve got whiskey dick but I kind of want to get it sucked anyway,” she announced, sitting upright with a wince, her hand on her belt buckle. “I’m going back to my bangroom. You guys want to come watch? I think this guy would be into it.”

“Uh, no. No thanks.” Quentin, more sober than either of them both as a function of Eliot’s ability to hold his liquor and because he’d quit way before they had. Eliot pouted at him, but Quentin scowled and shook his head. “Here, there’s so much still on the table, let me make him, um, you? Let’s get a plate together.”

“Can’t suck a dick when you’ve been starving all night,” Eliot said wisely, like he was quoting one of the sages of antiquity, Socrates or Plato or Merlin. “On the other hand—”

“No, no other hand,” Quentin said hurriedly. He stood and started putting food on one of the empty serving platters. When he was done, he had some roast, a little bit of a potato salad with a spicy sauce, some cheeses, a lot of fruit, a single bread roll. He held it out to Margo, who was busy having a face conversation with Eliot. It was unfair that they could communicate without words no matter whose bodies they were in, but Margo took the platter with one final eyebrow raise and sauntered unsteadily away from the table.

“See you in the morning, boys,” she said, her voice rumbling. “Who put that wall there? So rude, just blatantly in my way, as if I’m not the High Queen of this damned place. Hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do tonight, and if you do, tell me all about it.”

Quentin and Eliot watched her leave, then listened to her thump and crash down the hallway.

Quentin crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m going to go check on my body. Can you make it back to your room by yourself?”

“Please. I could walk around the world like this.” Eliot climbed to his feet. Quentin had seen him drunk off his ass in his own body, his movements too broad but confident. As himself, Quentin didn’t doubt that he could drunk-walk around the world. In Trentick’s body, Eliot swayed a little, and Quentin doubted he could get around the block.

“Come with me,” he said with a sigh. “You’re probably not too drunk to be helpful.”

“I’m at my _most_ helpful when I’m drunk,” Eliot said agreeably, and laced his arm through Quentin’s. “For example, I’ll help make sure you make it back to my room. I’m not sure I can trust you to not make my body sleep in your terrible chair out of spite.”

“I would never,” Quentin said, although his plan for the night had definitely involved dumping Eliot back in Eliot’s room and then bunking down in his room’s terrible chair. But it wasn’t about spite, so he wasn’t lying, really.

It was late enough in the evening, and enough people were probably busy worshiping their last sexual partners, that the halls of the castle were empty. They moved through them quietly, not encountering a single person between the dining room and their wing.

Eliot paused outside of Quentin’s room. “You know, if I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have slept with Trenten,” he said, voice as hushed and soft as the burnt-down candles lighting their way. “He wasn’t important. It wasn’t necessary. I wouldn’t have deliberately—”

“I know,” Quentin said, and hesitated.

If he had known then what he knew now, would he have asked Eliot not to sleep with anyone else before the Worship Moon, or would that have been too close to asking Eliot for something impossible? How long could he have asked Eliot to be abstinent? If he had asked Eliot not to fuck again until Quentin had picked someone up, that would have felt kind of controlling and cruel. If he’d asked Eliot to fuck only him?

Well.

That was pretty much the definition of the relationship Eliot didn’t want with him. Not in this timeline. Even if he’d made the request, it never would have worked.

The only solution would be to not have slept with Eliot at all.

“No,” Quentin said. “Neither of us are to blame, Eliot. We couldn’t have known. How could we? It’s just--this place.”

Quentin thought about their last night together and yeah, okay, he wouldn’t have died for that blowjob, but he couldn’t have turned it down.

“And because I fuck too much.”

Quentin rolled his eyes. “And because you fuck too much, sure. Whatever appeases your ego, I guess. Now, are you going to hang out in the hallway, or do you want to help flip me over? I don’t want to get bedsores.”

Eliot beamed up at him. “You don’t need Trentea’s help to flip you over,” he said, voice low and silky, the audio equivalent to his black velvet pants. “I’ve done it a time or two myself, unaided. You’re in my body for a while longer. You should try not to forget how strong I am.”

Quentin licked his lip. That was a thought for tomorrow’s shower. He should have as much fun as possible, before the Lover’s Moon wiped him away. “I haven’t forgotten,” he said, and he led Eliot in to visit his body.

~

Nothing had changed since the morning. Quentin’s bedroom was as warm and dark as ever, quiet as a tomb. Quentin’s body had stayed in the same position. The drool spot on his pillow had dried up. Somehow that made the whole thing even more disquieting, like the drool had been proof of life.

“ _Care and Feeding of the Lovelorn_ implied that this was unnecessary,” Quentin said. “But I’m not going to take any chances.” He put his hands—the hands he was using—under his own hips—the ones twisted in his sheets—and got a good grip. Eliot’s hands spanned across his body, but he tried not to notice the way it looked, the way it felt, to be touching himself with Eliot’s long fingers.

“One, two, three,” he said. Eliot pushed his shoulder and his body twisted over clumsily but completely. His arms thumped down, his head cranked to the side. His torso was bare, the sheet having twisted underneath him. His stomach rose and fell with his breaths, shallow and slow. Quentin was glad to see any movement at all, though. No one should ever have to watch themselves lying in a bed, barely breathing, he thought. There was a reason you didn’t see that without magic.

Fillory had been his dream for so long, but somehow dreams…changed in Fillory. Magic was weirder than he ever could have guessed. And what you thought you wanted never turned out the way you expected.

He didn’t look too intently at his own face as he pulled and tugged the sheets free. Eliot helped him tug them into place midway up his chest; modest, Quentin thought, but not trapped.

They each took one of his hands and stretched his arms out, down his sides. When Quentin looked up, he saw Eliot carefully aligning his fingers so that his hand looked soft and relaxed, not clawed and frozen like it was on Quentin’s side.

“Allow me,” Eliot murmured, looking up and noticing what Quentin had noticed. He moved to the other side of the bed and Quentin stepped back, out of his way, watching Eliot handle him.

The candles they had lit sputtered, smoking a little. The light was nice though, golden and soft. The Quentin in the bed looked much more peaceful lying on his back in the candlelight, his hair tousled, eyes closed, lips parted. The linens tucked neatly around him gleamed. Maybe there was something to that scratchy material after all.

Eliot leaned forward, a hand braced on the bed. He hesitated for a moment, looking at Quentin’s blank face, while Quentin shifted uneasily beside him.

“What are you doing, Eliot?”

“I think it’s worth trying this,” Eliot said, and kissed the Quentin in the bed. It was a light kiss, gentle and sweet, familiar and almost chaste. Quentin looked away for a moment, feeling weirdly like he was interrupting something painfully intimate, and when he looked back, he saw Eliot breaking the kiss with a gentle bite to his lower lip.

Eliot stood up and smiled wryly at Quentin. “In Fillory, you have to try everything,” he said. “Also, you’re very beautiful. Even like this.”

Then he seemed to catch himself being sincere and smirked. “Maybe especially like this. You’re less annoying when your head is empty. Emptier than usual, anyway.”

“You just like shorter guys with, I don’t know.” Quentin reached over and self-deprecatingly poked his own abs, soft and lightly furred. He didn’t actually have enough examples to form a hypothesis about Eliot’s type. He didn’t remember Eliot having any boyfriends in their shared timeline. There was Mike, of course, and Trentissey was built kind of the same, with broad shoulders for his height, and some extra weight on his stomach. Solid. “Not twinks. Do you not go for twinks?”

“There’s a time and place to go for everything,” Eliot said. “Twinks, twunks, otters, bears, and myself, oh my.”

“That list is weirder in Fillory than it would be at home,” Quentin said.

“Tell me about it,” Eliot said, tipping his chin up with a slow, inviting smile. “Just two weeks ago, I met a bear—a talking bear, right, a Fillorian bear—who could have filmed porn with any of the big studios back home. He was in a committed relationship, of course, all the bears are at this time of year, but—well, nevermind.” He waved his hand dismissively, then tucked it into the crook of Quentin’s elbow, leaning against his side and affecting a deep, noisy yawn. “Time for bed?” he asked.

“I think I’m good for a little more research.” Quentin went to push his hair back, trying not to be distracted by the idea of Eliot hitting on a porno bear. “Um, right. I’ve got my second wind, I could—”

“No,” Eliot said, firmly but not unkindly. “Come on. Let’s go. You’ll still be here in the morning. Now, it’s time for bed.”

~

Quentin had never been someone who slept regularly, or well. No one he knew at Brakebills was much better. It was like the drive to find magic had made them all restless, impatient insomniacs. Finding it didn’t fix the problem, because what if the magic left you while you weren’t using it? Better to stay awake all hours and work, or, if you were Eliot and Margo and the rest of the physical kids, party and fuck and do drugs and power it all with a little extra glittering spark.

Sleep was for the weak, and weakness was the end of magic, and magic was the only thing that mattered.

Trentisso didn’t have those problems. Eliot unselfconsciously stripped Trentron’s body, brushed his teeth, washed his face, and crawled into his bed with a satisfied noise. He threw his arm around one of Eliot’s fifteen spare pillows, and fell asleep like a pebble falling into a pond.

Quentin didn’t get naked. The velvet pants were too warm and they stuck to Eliot’s sheets, but he didn’t know what the protocol was for chastely sleeping in the bed of your fuck buddy, while he was trapped in the body of another man, and you were trapped in his body, and your body was comatose several rooms away.

The moon sank lower in the sky with every heartbeat. Eventually it would stop him in his tracks. He wondered what it would be like—would he be back in his body for one final, blazing moment of consciousness? Or when the Worship Moon was over, would he just leave Eliot’s body all at once? Would he become a ghost?

If he became a ghost, he was going to haunt Eliot like fifteen angry poltergeists in a ten poltergeist bag.

He rolled onto his side, facing Eliot. Quentin studied his face. He had a soft, pouty mouth. Quentin could viscerally remember the feel of Eliot parting his lips with a thumb, touching them with a forefinger, kissing them, fucking them; they’d never talked about it, but he would have bet that his mouth was one of Eliot’s favorite things about him. And now here was Trentiss, like a dark mirror version of Quentin, lying next to him in Eliot’s bed.

Quentin hated him. He couldn’t help it, it wasn’t what he wanted to be feeling—he wanted to be reasonable and mature about the fact that Eliot had every right to have slept with him, and he had every right to have slept with whoever else he had slept with. But if he survived the next two weeks, Quentin was going to find him in the market and—

Well, and buy whatever he was selling, probably. Quentin wasn’t the kind of king who banished someone for sleeping with his fuck buddy.

He just _wished_ he were.

It was nice to be lying down next to someone, though. He and Eliot didn’t just go to bed together in this lifetime. Alice had been gone for so long, off on Earth with Fen and Penny and Todd and Frey, to find a clock made of Fillorian metals, long lost in a European antique store—or maybe a market in the Middle East, or perhaps a Target in Ohio, they’d all disagreed about the clues—whose hands were knives that could only harm ghosts. There was no one else to crawl into bed with, except Margo, and frankly Quentin would rather have gotten into bed with the ghost-killing clock.

Of course, it did seem plausible that Alice would rather crawl into bed with the clock than with him. Their situation was, as always, fraught. Quentin’s relationships were always fraught.

He hadn’t meant for the humours between him and Eliot to become unbalanced. In the other lifetime, they’d been together for decades; had been, for all intents and purposes, married. They’d had a family. They’d been monogamous or something like it for so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to be anything else.

The other lifetime had been a step outside of reality, though. A loop they’d been trapped in. A beautiful and warm trap. Eliot wasn’t going to be with him just because he’d done it once before.

Quentin had told himself that after first time they fucked, and the second time, and the third and fourth times, and the last time. It wasn’t his fault if the line had gotten blurry some of the times in between.

He’d had to set limits for himself. He’d had to tell Eliot that he was setting limits, so that Eliot wouldn’t think he’d gotten too attached and stop seducing him. No thinking of Eliot like, like a boyfriend. No expectations. No exclusivity. No more nights spent in Eliot’s bed.

Well, look where that had gotten him.

Quentin rolled over on his other side, putting his back to Eliot. The bed felt colder, and the corners of the room were deep voids yawning emptiness across the floor. When he was a poltergeist, he’d remember that about the corners, and how Eliot’s drapes shivered even on still, breezeless nights.

Unbalanced romantic humours, he thought, staring into the darkness. They wouldn’t have been unbalanced, if Eliot had loved him back.

~

In the gray light before dawn, Quentin startled. An arm had flung itself over him, and a very lightly stubbled face was nuzzling against the nape of his neck.

Eliot, he thought, with sleepy satisfaction; Eliot had fallen asleep halfway across the bed more than once, only to rouse a little and come to cuddle in the morning. It hadn’t taken Quentin long to realize he liked the weight of Eliot’s body against his back, the sparse, rough curls on his chest, even the softness of Eliot’s cock against his ass. Tonight, though, all the shapes and weights and smells were different. He roused for a moment, about to shake himself free, then subsided.

It’s just Eliot, he thought, as the unfamiliar shape tucked against him, murmuring his name. Just Eliot, still. Just Eliot, always.

He closed his eyes against the dark corners of Eliot’s room, and fell back to sleep with a sigh.

~

Eliot was up and gone by the time Quentin blinked himself awake. He’d left a rabbit: GONE LIBRARY COME IDIOT. Quentin wondered uneasily where the punctuation was supposed to be, but got up and dressed and went to the library obediently, like an idiot.

Eliot sat on the couch this time, buried under a stack of books. It wasn’t much past mid-morning, but he had cups stacked around him, three plates of nibbled snacks, and Margo asleep across his lap.

“Hangover,” he explained without looking up at Quentin, nudging Margo with the corner of the book he was holding. “Riory doesn’t really drink, if you can believe it.”

“Margo’s body must be going through withdrawal.” Quentin cleared a few books off the green chair and sat down. “Is she—is the rest of her okay?”

“Fine,” Eliot said. “Riory took her body for a hike. She’ll hate that, but it will probably do her good. Now, are you ready for _Thirteen Tales of  Doomed Worship_?”

“Nooo,” Quentin groaned, but he took the book off the top of the stack Eliot pointed to with his free hand. _Thirteen Tales_ was ancient, decrepit, and had stunningly pornographic illustrations. He turned pages carefully, trying not to pay too much attention—did that dildo have three heads? was that guy’s dick so big it should have knocked him off balance? did that woman shave her pubic hair into that shape on purpose; it looked kind of like a sigil—and not hoping for much.

Fifteen minutes in, he’d started to suspect that the author was using Doom as a keyword for multiorgasmic bone fest. “Eliot,” he said, peeling two pages apart. “Not that I’m questioning the keywords you used when you magicked these books off the shelves, but I’m beginning to suspect that this is _not_ a serious book of magic.”

“No, I know,” Eliot said, turning the page of his serious book of magic. “You were so gloomy yesterday, I thought I’d start you off with something more fun this morning. Happy second day in my body, Q.”

“Thanks,” Eliot said grimly. He’d reached the chapter actually devoted to the Worship Moon, but the contents seemed to consist entirely of two things: how to use a penis if you’d never had one before, and why you shouldn’t wait until you’d “gone to worship” before realizing that cunnilingus was usually important. He set the book aside.

“I guess you haven’t found anything particularly pertinent?” he asked. If Eliot had, he’d have thrown himself a ticker tape parade.

“Nothing,” Eliot said. He put down the book he was reading, resting it on Margo’s face. “I must’ve skimmed fifteen books before you dragged yourself out of my bed—Trenticle runs on a farmer’s clock, I think, that was the first sunrise I’d seen without having been awake all night since I was a kid—and add that to however many we read yesterday? Barely any new information.”

They sat quietly for a moment, Eliot frowning down at the book he’d rested on Margo’s face, Quentin turning _Thirteen Tales_ over and over on the table next to the chair. Every time he accidentally caught a glimpse of a new page, he shuddered. Trust Ember and Umber to create the most horrifying holiday he’d ever heard of.

If only he’d heard of it sooner.

“My legs are falling asleep,” Eliot said eventually. He poked Margo on the chin until she grunted and lashed out at him, sliding off the couch in the process; she was so asleep, she just curled her massive body up, sighed, and started snoring. Eliot stood, stretching. He flashed some belly and Quentin looked away; Trentist wasn’t growing on him, but it was getting easier, somehow, to forget that he didn’t have Eliot’s appeal.

“Come on.” Done with his stretch, Eliot reached out, took Thirteen Tales, dropped it back in the stack next to the chair, and took Quentin’s hand. He pulled, and Quentin allowed him to drag him up. “We can’t spend all day here, we have supplicants,” Eliot said. “Some people will drag themselves out of their love nests to complain no matter what body they’re in.”

“Yeah, I’ve only got a few days to live. Might as well try to help a few Fillorians settle the issue of whose duck is secretly cannibalizing whose calves,” Quentin said morosely.

“Ducks can’t cannibalize cows, city boy,” Eliot said. “Now, will they cannibalize each other? Absolutely. In fact, let me tell you—”

They crossed the library’s threshold. Quentin, dutifully listening to the horrors of duck-on-duck crime, suddenly sniffed and looked down. “Eliot, your pocket is smoking,” he pointed out. “Eliot. Eliot. Your pocket.”

“No it isn’t,” Eliot said, looking sideways at him, cool and derisive even though Trentian’s face wasn’t really made to carry off derisive any better than Quentin’s did.

Quentin sniffed again. “You smell like—burnt chocolate. And wine? Like a spilled amount of wine, not hangover pores.”

“You probably stepped in something,” Eliot said, and he sailed, pocket _absolutely_ smoking, down the hall.

~

Quentin had mostly been joking, but they did hear two duck-related stories during their afternoon round of hearing petitions from the Fillorians. They also heard about three spells gone awry, two of which were badly-aimed love spells. Then there was a lost deed, a case of poisoning by mushroom tea, and a variety of other petty issues.

“It’s times like this where you’re really reminded how different Earth and Fillory folk tales can be,” Eliot said morosely as their last petitioners left the reception hall, crossing through the shafts of dusty light let in by the tall carved columns which dotted the room. They were loudly arguing about who was the best butcher near their two farms, which shared a border and, occasionally, a sheep. Eliot had been trying to impart some King Solomon-style wisdom on them, but they’d agreed very easily to cut the sheep in half. He hadn’t even had a chance to get to the end of the story.

“It does kind of make me glad they were fighting over a sheep and not a baby,” Quentin agreed. “But hey, now that they’re gone, do you wanna tell me what’s in your pocket?”

“Nothing is in my pocket,” Eliot said, guileless. That was one expression that worked better on Trentopus’s face than on Eliot’s own, Quentin thought. It was somehow more believable. Probably because there was something wry and knowing about Eliot’s eyebrows and the natural set of his mouth. Eliot probably hadn’t looked guileless since puberty had started refining the planes and angles of his face.

“Technically, that’s _my_ pocket.” Quentin crossed his arms over his chest. He still didn’t feel like he’d worked out the details of any kind of intimidating loom, but at least this time he didn’t punch himself. “I could ask for it back.”

Eliot raised an eyebrow at him. “You could. I’d _give_ it back. And I’d give back all the rest of your clothes while I was at it. Right here in this reception room, in front of that one maid and those three sculptures of satyrs and—”

“Eliot, that’s harassment,” Quentin hissed under his breath. “That maid is our employee.”

Margo slunk dramatically out of the shadows, as well as a man who had to be 6’5” could slink, to sit in her throne. “Which maid are we harassing? Mmm, nice,” she murmured, eyeing the girl, who was too far away to hear them, unselfconsciously on her knees scrubbing ashes out of the fireplace.

The ashes glinted with little starshine bits of used magic, and the girl had a smudge of them wiped carelessly and charmingly across her cheek. Her blue dress was low-cut and faded but well-made. She had a pair of sparrows sitting on her shoulder, and a white mouse darting playfully in and out of the puddle of her skirts on the floor.

“Cinderella, but make it Instagram,” Margo said. “If you two are done, I have news you might want to hear.”

Eliot leaned back in his throne, crossing one leg over the other. The effect wasn’t quite the same as usual, but regal enough. The Fillorians never seemed to wonder who was the High King when they came in with their petitions. They just always seemed to know, and Quentin had never doubted why. “Well, go on, Bambi,” he murmured. “Spit it out.”

Margo leaned forward. She had an ink-spotted crease on her cheek, and crumbs in her flowing blond hair. “If the two of you hadn’t left me _lying on the floor_ , I might not even have seen it, so you can thank my incredible love for you which allows me to forgive you terrible crimes against my dignity,” and she handed Quentin a book. Its corners were singed and hot to the touch, and it smelled of burned chocolate and wine.

“Nothing in your pocket?” Quentin asked Eliot, whose expression had curdled, like Margo had squeezed lemon in his milky tea.

“When I woke up, on the floor, the first thing I saw was this book shoved under the couch,” Margo said. “I thought, well this is great. I can’t trust my friends to make sure I drink some water and another glass of wine and take a nap in my own bed, but I can trust them to leave me to clean under the furniture when their lazy asses can’t be bothered. And then? I saw the title.”

The book was bound in a soft leather dyed sky blue, the title stamped on with gold and pink lettering so heavily curlicued that it was barely readable. Quentin squinted at it. “Does this—does this say _Remedies for Those Afflicted by Carnal Magics and the Dark Arts of Love_?”

“And I found it shoved under a couch,” Margo said triumphantly. “We never would have known it existed, if it hadn’t been for me. Quick, open it to page 473.”

Quentin eyed Eliot. “Yeah Margo, what are the odds?” He turned to page 473. The title was evocative and the binding rich and beautiful, but the book itself looked an old dictionary, packed with words in the smallest type possible. He skimmed quickly for relevant phrases and—“'Worship Moon,’” he read. “’A period of two weeks wherein the gods Ember and Umber encourage glorious appreciation of one’s sexual partner via—' None of this is anything new, Margo.”

Margo rolled her eyes. “Would I _bring this here_ if it were nothing new? I’m not an _idiot_ , Q. Skip to the end.”

Quentin licked his lips and skipped to the end. “'—there is one known cure for those afflicted by the unbalanced humours of love and unfaithfulness,’” he read out loud. “'If the soul shall leave the body of one partner, the other, if sufficiently inclined to guilt and remorse, with affection in their heart, and a prayer to Ember and Umber on their lips, may, upon seeking out the souls and bodies of the others in their chain of possession, ask them to participate, fervently and earnestly, in an act of great—'” At the end of the passage, with his heart starting to beat a little more hopefully in his chest, he looked up at the top of page 474.

Page 474 was missing. The book skipped to page 476, with a drawing of a couple fucking outside in a clearing in a dense, mossy forest; the moon hung high above them, its rays illuminating their blissful faces. “'—thus may the afflicted be reunited with their physical manifestation, so to celebrate the wanton kindness of their lords, Ember and Umber, the merciful and wonderful and satiated.'”

Quentin looked up. “Give me the page, Eliot,” he demanded, rising from his throne.

Eliot tipped his head back, looking at him from under dark lashes. “No,” he said. “The ritual usually fails, is a huge amount of work, would embarrass you, and isn’t _necessary_.”

“Don’t I get to decide what’s necessary and what’s not when it’s my life on the line?” Quentin asked. “You can’t just keep things from me because you’ve decided you know what I need.”

Margo looked between them. “Wait a minute, are you guys saying I did not just find the exact book you were looking for—oh, stupid, stupid, of course I didn’t. I’ve got to tell you, Riory is gorgeous, but he’s slowing me _down_.”

“You found it, Bambi,” Eliot said, still watching Quentin. “You just didn’t find it first. Q, you don’t need this. Everything I’ve read—and I’ve read everything there is on this—assures me that when the Lover’s Moon rises, you’ll be fine.”

“Tell me that to my face,” Quentin said. “My other face, the one that might not ever wake up!”

Eliot sighed and stood. He put a hand on Quentin’s cheek and looked up into his eyes, serious. “It’s a _sex ritual_ ,” he said. “It involves finding the entire chain of people Trentanor has slept with and everyone they’ve slept with. It involves bringing however many people that is here, to the castle. It involves all of those people taking off their clothes as the Lover’s Moon rises, and fucking each other as it reaches its peak. Including me, and you, and Trenth, and your dumb empty body. And then it almost never works.”

He dropped his hand. “And your humours aren’t unbalanced, so what’s the point?”

Quentin bit his lip. It would be so easy to explain to Eliot why he was wrong. It wasn’t like it would physically hurt him to say something, to confess. Eliot would probably even be kind about it, in his sarcastic way. It was a pathetic little secret, but Quentin was kind of used to being pathetic. It would take courage to say it, but Quentin had learned a lot about courage.

“I can’t take the chance,” he said instead, avoiding Eliot’s eyes. “Better safe than sorry.”

Eliot stood silently in front of him. Quentin looked over his shoulder. Instagram Cinderella had finished with the fireplace and moved onto polishing an incredibly phallic candlestick, paying them no attention whatsoever. What kind of place was Fillory, where a life-or-death discussion about sex between two kings was so completely unnoteworthy? Sometimes Quentin wished he had never read these books, never learned about magic, never—

“Fine,” Eliot said abruptly. He took a step back, and Quentin automatically took a step after him, eyes flying up to his. Eliot spread his hands, shrugging. “You’re right. Better safe than sorry. I’ll go out to the market and start seeing who I can round up. You and Margo will have to take over my duties for a few days. Keep your chin up, Quentin—I mean that literally, you’re ruining my posture—and remember that Fillorian stories never have the moral you expect.”

“Days?” Quentin asked, uneasy. “We don’t—we don’t have a lot of time, Eliot, you’ll need to keep the, uh, _rounding up_ to a minimum.”

Eliot rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe how much work I’m about to put in for someone so, so brainless. Margo, do what you can with him, all right? Don’t let him run with scissors or ask himself any questions about why he’s doing what he’s done or make a mess in my room. I’ll see you when I’m done fulfilling this stupid, ridiculous quest.”

He turned on his heel and stalked away. “You missed a spot,” he said bitchily to Instagram Cinderella on his way out the door.

Quentin swallowed heavily, staring after him.

“I can’t _believe_ this place,” Margo said. She dropped her head against the back of her throne, scowling up at the ceiling. Instagram Cinderella’s little sparrows, startled by Eliot’s harsh tone, had flown up to the rafters. One of them was busily chirping, an irritated little song. The other one was shitting on Eliot’s throne. “All this drama, and _for what_?” She perked up. “Wait, if there’s going to be an orgy, can I come? I’ll bring Riory. We’ll stay out of the way, I promise.”

“Yeah, okay,” Quentin said. “Wait, no. This isn’t just an orgy, Margo. This is an orgy to _save my life_.”

Margo sighed. “It’s a good thing you’re cute, Q,” she said, and stood up. The dais shook a little underfoot when she came over to kiss his cheek. Her lips were warm, and she’d shaved really closely, or else Riory didn’t grow a beard. “Don’t hurt your pretty little head worrying about all this.”

“A little respect would be nice,” Quentin said, leaning into her, miserable and confused. “Like maybe once, like one time, before I die on this stupid planet.”

Margo gave him a brisk, one-armed hug. Even a gentle thump on the back was enough to rock him on his feet. “Earn it, kiddo,” she said cheerfully. “And hey, if you’re going to run with scissors anyway, try doing a little introspection without being quite so self-centered, huh?”

“That’s an oxymoron,” Quentin said.

“You’re an oxymoron,” Margo said, and she was laughing as she walked away, leaving Quentin standing alone on the dais, sunwashed and uncertain.

“Are you finished here, your highness?” Instagram Cinderella asked. She pointed at his feet. “It’s only that the birds are still mad, you see, and I don’t want to get it when I’m doing the clean up.”

“Huh, yeah, okay,” Quentin said, and went off to sit with himself for a while.

~

Alone in the quiet of his room, Quentin tidied up a little, thinking.

The problem, he’d thought, was that he was a monogamous guy, and Eliot wasn’t. So why set up the expectation of monogamy?

But what evidence did he have of that? He’d been the one to fall in love with someone else in their other timeline. Eliot had never brought home a boyfriend. He had never said he wanted to.

A bigger problem, he’d told himself, was that he was a true love kind of guy. He’d loved Alice with all his heart until she’d stopped wanting that, and even a little beyond. He’d always wanted a partner. Someone to be with, to trust, to hold.

And of course he’d assumed that wasn’t Eliot’s game. Right? Eliot was a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy, with emphasis on the leave ‘em.

Except where was Quentin’s proof that Eliot ever left? Eliot was loyal to a fault, if only to a few. Hadn’t Eliot spent decades taking care of him in the other timeline? Hadn’t the spent years waking up together in the mornings, and cooking for each other, comforting each other during the tough times, and kissing each other out of joy?

Quentin collapsed into his uncomfortable chair, holding the clothes Eliot had rejected when they were dressing him from Quentin’s meager wardrobe. He looked at his own profile, familiar and so strange from this angle, from Eliot’s eyes.

The Worship Moon, he thought. Was some of the softness he felt for himself in that moment influenced by Eliot’s body, by Eliot’s perception of him, by Ember and Umber’s stupid love magic? He’d never liked the shape of his nose, or the color of his hair. He’d never thought his arms looked good. He’d never noticed that his hands were nice, a good size and solid shape. He’d never. He’d never felt like this before.

Was he loved?

He sat with that question, alone with himself in the darkness, for a very long time.

~

Eliot sent men back to the castle by twos and threes; some on the second day he was gone, the third, the fifth.

Quentin felt increasingly awkward greeting each group, knowing they were expecting to strip down and fuck in front of him. But they were all nice guys, cheerful about spending a few days in the castle, looking forward to, well, essentially a sex vacation.

On the sixth day, he sent Eliot a rabbit. DONE YET HOW MANY MORE

On the seventh day, Eliot sent a rabbit back. TRENT AND FRIENDS TOTAL SLUTS BACK WHEN BACK

In his wildest dreams of Fillory, Quentin had never imagined hearing a rabbit shout SLUTS at him. He let the rabbit out of the castle and went to dinner, sighing.

The men were mostly young and attractive. They all knew each other, and knew who was in whose body.

“Oh, Flickerson is on his way, I sent him a rabbit,” Notham told him on the eighth night, while an increasingly anxious Quentin hosted ten strange men; Riory, who had accepted the situation with aplomb; Margo, who kept rolling her eyes but also beaming; and Insta Cindy, as Margo had taken to referring to the maid from the receiving room.

Her real name, Insta Cindy had told him, was Fiotia.

“Good news, she’s not an employee at all,” Margo drawled, one arm over Fiotia’s shoulders and one arm over Riory’s. “She’s a princess from a neighboring country. She’s here to work off a curse. Isn’t that nice?”

“I don’t think that makes her less of an employee,” Quentin said worriedly. “Or less, like, vulnerable? In need of our protection? Margo, you can’t just—”

“I killed five men,” Fiotia said, with a twinkling smile. “But only because they were rude, of course. You don’t intend to be rude, do you?”

Margo raised her eyebrows. “Five men, Q. I think she can handle little old me, don’t you?”

“Yuh—yes,” Quentin said, not one iota less worried, just differently worried. “But I’m still not sure about that HR department.”

Fiotia’s mouse climbed up her arm and chattered in her ear. She tipped her head down to listen to it politely, and then said, “Mr. Jojangle has a question. Can you explain to us please, what is an ‘HR department?’” Which was how Quentin, who hadn’t spent much time in anything like a business environment, ended up trying to explain corporate structures to twelve fascinated Fillorians, a mouse, and Margo.

“I think I accidentally gave them capitalism,” he told Margo that night, after everyone had dispersed to hang out, or sleep, or fuck—he understood that they were mostly fucking in their spare time while they waited for the Lovers Moon.

“We’ll be gone long before the fallout,” Margo said, patting him on the shoulder. “But can we talk about how we accidentally invented reality television up here in this joint? I wish we had a couple cameras, a producer—can you imagine the ratings? Twelve magical bachelors, one magical you who looks like Eliot: _The Magical Bachelors_. No, _The Magelors_. No, no, I’ve got it. _The Bachigals_. It’s a hit.”

Quentin had opened and closed his mouth like a fish, then excused himself to bed, where he tried to cope with the idea that he was a colonizer, leaving destruction, free market economies, and reality television in his wake.

~

A rabbit appeared at breakfast the next morning. Quentin startled out of his anxious stupor and reached for it, but it hopped out of his reach with a dubious look, then scratched at its neck with a long, fluffy hind paw.

A ribbon fell onto the table with a clink. The Key of Truth. Quentin sighed and reached out for it, and saw Penny standing at the foot of the table, frowning at their guests.

“Eliot, what do you know about buying things at flea markets in Illinois, should we be haggling? I told Alice we should be haggling,” Penny said. “But Alice would rather die than make a deal with anyone, so we’re going to end up paying full price for this dumbass clock that could kill me, and if my mother found out, she’d skin me alive.”

“Uh, this is Quentin,” Quentin said, waving awkwardly at himself. He smiled at the bachigals crowded around, eating a mountain of eggs and bacon and sautéed spinach for breakfast. “Just talking to a ghost, it’s okay.”

Penny tilted his head. “Q? Is this another alternate timeline?”

“No, uh, not really.” Quentin shrugged. “There’s apparently a time on Fillory where you swap bodies with the last person you, uh, slept with, so I’m Eliot at the moment, and Eliot is—” He gestured at the bachigals sheepishly.

“Eliot is _all_ of these guys?” Penny said, awestruck and disbelieving, and Quentin winced.

“No, no, just—one of them, or not one of these ones, one who hasn’t arrived yet. Anyway, he’s in some other body, and my body is dead, or more like, hmm, comatose in my room, until the full moon rises, at which point I’ll either be dead or back to normal.”

Penny stared at him, blank-faced. Quentin shrugged.

“Well _fuck that_ ,” Penny said. “Give that rabbit the key back, I’ll tell Alice that Eliot said we haggle, she won’t know the difference. Buh-bye,” and he was gone as fast as Quentin tying the key back to the ribbon and looping that around the rabbit’s downy-soft neck.

“Quest business,” Quentin said to the bachigals. He hunched back over his tea, trying not to read disaster in the leaves. “You guys know how it goes.”

“Not really,” Teatree said uneasily. “Do you…frequently receive visits from rabbits bearing ghosts?”

“Yeah, kinda,” Quentin said, and ignored the way all the bachigals huddled together a little tighter around their enormous platter of bacon. If their thinking he was crazy got him a little more breathing room, he’d take it.

“Only a couple days left.” One of the other bachelors patted Teatree on the shoulder. “Would you all like to come back to my room and play strip card reading?”

“And you guys think I’m weird for the ghost-carrying rabbits,” Quentin muttered, not looking up as the table emptied, and no one stayed behind to hear him complain.

That was just fine, he decided irritably. It left him more time and space for his tea.

He swirled his cup and watched the leaves settle into the shape of a skull and crossbones.

Quentin set his cup aside uneasily. On second thought, maybe it was time to switch to water.

~

Two days before the Lover’s Moon rose, Trento himself finally arrived at the castle. He was in Grigg’s body, and the whole gang was delighted to see him, greeting him with hugs that lifted him off the ground.

“Hi,” Quentin said, greeting him with a crooked smile and a hand held out to shake, then pulled back, then held out again. It was weird to think about greeting someone Eliot had slept with, while trapped inside Eliot’s body. Would Trent hit on him? He knew what Trent looked like naked; real Trent, anyway, and not Grigg, who was the eldest of the bachigals and kind of okay, but—“Uh, this is going to sound bad, but we’ve been calling you a bunch of, like, variations on Trent, and I’ll be honest, I’m not sure of your real name?”

“King Quentin,” Trent said, bowing. “Please, call me Trenishio. Or,” seeing the stress on Quentin’s face, “Trent is fine. High King Eliot told me to report to you here, and you would know what to do with me.” His eyes sparkled, and the corners of his lips twitched. He was a flirt, Quentin thought. What had that been like, with Eliot flirting back? Had they flirted when Eliot came to find Trent, in his own body?

Quentin cleared his throat. “Yeah, um. We are almost out of beds, but there are sofas? And a few emergency cots down in the—”

“I’ll share with you, Trenishio,” one of the bachigals said eagerly. And that opened up a watershed of offers; Trent turned in a circle, his hands outstretched, his head tipped back in laughter while his friends fought over who would get to sleep with him.

Quentin watched, frowning. He hadn’t known what to expect, but somehow Trent being the mayor of Fillorian Grindr wasn’t something he’d even considered.

All the guys knew him—including Riory, it turned out.

“Biblically?” Margo asked, delighted, and then they had to explain the Bible to the bachigals, which almost sent Quentin back to bed to agonize about evangelism.

So it turned out that Trent was a nice guy. He’d shown up in the chubby, older, doe-eyed body of a man named everyone liked, and, despite himself, Quentin liked him too. He wondered what it meant that this was the guy Trent chose to fuck at the most romantic time in the Fillorian calendar. He still wasn’t ready to buy whatever pleasant, sexually free bullshit Trent was selling.

“Oh, true love,” Teatree said, when Quentin hesitatingly hinted at what he was wondering. “Trenishio’s entirely in love with Grigg. They just can’t get their act together. I think he thought this Worship Moon’s glorious appreciation period would be the final clue Grigg needed to formalize their love match, but Grigg fucked someone else and took off for the mountains instead!”

“So romantic,” Deolal sighed, twirling his Legolas hair around his finger.

“If Trent’s in love with Grigg, why was he out there sleeping with Eliot, and, you know, everyone else who asked?” Quentin said. “Uh, no offense to those who asked, or whatever.”

“You can fuck people you’re not in love with,” Deolal said, raising an eyebrow so blond it was almost invisible.

“Would you like us to show you?” Teatree smiled at him and Quentin, having spent a few days with the bachigals at that point and knowing how quickly they escalated from flirting to fondling, hastily excused himself.

So Trent was in love, he thought, pacing the reception hall. Did that make the entire situation better, or worse? He hadn’t meant to fuck Quentin over, he’d just been—himself, and wishing some guy he liked would like him back, and using the Worship Moon for his own devices. That was probably exactly what Ember and Umber had intended. It was just too bad that Quentin had gotten caught in the middle.

Too bad, and exactly his luck.

~

The last days dragged. Quentin jumped up every time he heard footsteps, hoping it was Eliot, but it never was.

“I don’t know,” Trent said for the dozenth time, when Quentin stopped him in the halls to ask again why Eliot was coming back so late. “He said something about a spell he wanted to check out. He was looking for vision root. He had a lot of chocolate. I don’t know what kind of spell involves vision root and chocolate, but, whatever that is, that’s what the High King is looking for.”

He put his hand on Quentin’s shoulder, looking up at him with kind eyes. “Would your highness like some oral sex?” His eyebrows drew together, solicitous, concerned. “Just to help you relax, of course.”

“Uhnothankyou,” Quentin said, and bolted, shook.

He locked himself in the library and settled down to research like a crazy person with some dangerous thoughts to avoid. It was futile—he couldn’t find a single spell that used both vision root and chocolate—but it helped pass the time.

What was Eliot doing? Was sending Trent back ahead of him just a ploy, an attempt to make the most dramatic entrance possible? Or was it something serious; had Eliot found out something about either the ritual or the unbalanced humours, or—

He sent a final rabbit: PLEASE RESPOND FREAKING OUT

And, much to his shock, finally got a rabbit back: FOUND SOMETHING FUN RELAX

A second rabbit arrived as he was preparing to tear Eliot’s hair out in fury; days without a response, and Eliot wanted to close with relax? He’d show Eliot relaxed. He’d show Eliot relaxed right onto the floor, in handfuls, he’d burn some and stuff it in Eliot’s pillow.

HOME SOON, the second rabbit said. HOME SOON HOME SOON HOME SOON

Well. All right, Quentin thought. Home soon. All right.

~

The castle was abuzz with chatter. It was nice to have all the extra people around; Quentin would kind of miss them, when either he or they were gone.

“Will you help carry me to the library?” he asked Margo. “Well, not this me, me-me. My body. I want me in the library for this.”

“That’s really committing to a bit, bookworm,” Margo drawled, but agreed. Quentin guided her anxiously from his room to the spare bed he’d had set up in the middle of the library, where the bachigals were laughing amongst themselves as they pushed furniture back against the walls. His body was surprisingly easy to carry, splitting the weight between Eliot and Riory’s strength. He probably could have carried himself. But having Margo helped. She only banged his head against one doorway, and he was mostly sure that had been an accident.

“Can I comb your hair?” she asked, setting him down on the sheets, his head on the pillow.

“No.” Quentin finger-combed his hair himself, arranging it in a fan around his head. No, that looked too much like he had drowned. He finger-combed it down instead, tucking the long ends under his neck.

“Can I give you a makeover?”

“No, Margo.” He looked nervously out the window. They’d had lunch already, but the sun wasn’t too low in the sky; still time for Eliot to arrive.

Margo hummed. “Can I at least get someone to suck your dick, so you calm the fuck down already?”

“Why do people keep offering me that,” Quentin said, and banished her until closer to sunset.

The waiting was unbearable. It was likely that it didn’t matter when Eliot arrived—Quentin had drawn out the possible eventualities, and only the one where he needed the sex ritual to survive required Eliot’s presence. But he was nervous anyway, his heart beating what-ifs in his chest.

Besides that, he just. He missed Eliot. Home soon, he reminded himself, and hoped that it was true.

~

After a light dinner—he didn’t want anyone too full to fuck, in case that was necessary—Quentin perched on a ladder, watching the main road leading up to the castle, while the bachigals mingled nearby, relaxed and half-drunk; he’d busted out the effervescent navy alcohol in honor of the occasion.

“You know that stuff is almost impossible to replace,” Eliot said, from behind him. Quentin scrambled around so fast he almost fell off the ladder.

Eliot wore dust-covered black breeches and a long topcoat. He’d found a cravat somewhere. His hair was sweaty and wild. He was flushed. He looked like he had rushed back to the castle at a breakneck pace, but when Quentin met his eyes, he was almost smiling.

“I figured it doesn’t matter,” Quentin said breathlessly. “How did you sneak into the castle?”

Eliot shrugged. “There’s a secret door spell for dramatic entrances. Margo and I found it months ago. How did you think she managed to just swoop in all the time?” He tilted his head, taking in all of Quentin’s preparations: the sheets of magically impermeable fabric over all the furniture and bookshelves, the pillows on the floor in every one of the library’s nooks, and the happy bachigals mingling with glasses of navy-blue glitter in their hands.

“For the orgy,” Quentin explained. “I didn’t want to damage the books.”

“They’re under a preservation spell, but all right.” Eliot looked at Quentin sideways, an eyebrow raised. “Why doesn’t it matter if you use up my entire supply of the best liquor I’ve ever had in my life?”

Quentin licked his lip, hands spreading helplessly. “Either I die so I don’t care, or I live and I’m so happy that I don’t care.”

Eliot closed his eyes, expression pained. “I’m going to go back on the road. I’ll wander Fillory lamenting my poor, stupid friend until the next Worship Moon. I’ll write songs about this, and people will write songs about me. Quentin, how could you possibly die now? You’ve got balanced humours, and a backup plan.”

“Yeah, about that,” Quentin said, taking a step toward him. It was good to see Eliot, even with his stranger’s face. It felt like the holding pattern that Quentin had forced himself into for the last week, the anxious loops he’d run over and over again, were finally taking a new shape. Something understandable. Something navigable. Something he might be able to handle, if he was brave. He licked his lip and ducked his head. “The humours, I mean? Eliot, I’ve been thinking—”

“Eliot,” Margo crooned, swooping into the room with her entourage around her. Knowing she had a dramatic entrance spell didn’t make the moment any less dramatic. “You made it back in time. Welcome to the season finale of Magical Bachelors in Paradise.”

Eliot air-kissed her. “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” he said. “Nice choice of venue.”

Margo rolled her eyes. “That’s all Q. He has some theory—Q, what was your theory?”

“The preservation spell,” Quentin said. “I figured, if this doesn’t work, maybe you can find some other way.” He hesitated. “Less chance of that if my body starts to rot or whatever.”

Eliot took a step back, quick and off-balance, as if he’d been punched out of place. An unknowable look crossed his face in a wave, then settled blankly.

“No, Eliot,” Quentin said, reaching for him. “Let me explain.”

Eliot shook his head. “I went out into a magical society and played boner detective with some guy I slept with once. For you, Quentin. I did that for you, and _this_ is what--no, you know what? I’m not having this conversation here,” and he turned away. “Excuse me, Margo, Riory. Insta Cindy, nice to see you, bye,” he said, and stalked towards the door.

“Uh,” Quentin said, looking at Margo. “This is going to be one of the weirder things I’ve ever had to do.” He hoisted himself over his own shoulder, and staggered after Eliot.

The sun had almost set out beyond the library windows. Twilight stretched up from the horizon, blues deepening. A few stars were starting to twinkle, and the bachigals were starting to strip.

 _I did it for you. I did it for you._ Eliot's words echoed in his head, and his heart began to beat faster. I did it for you.

“Uh, hey guys,” Quentin said. He shifted the weight of his own body on his shoulder, and grinned uneasily when their faces turned to his. They were all so handsome, and he’d come to like most of them; Trent, it turned out, had decent taste in guys. He felt kind of bad about disrupting their lives, but.

But it was time.

Quentin called up all his courage and said, “No sex ritual tonight. I’m calling it off.”

A disappointed murmur rose from the crowd.

Trent grinned at him while shushing the rest of the bachigals. “Just because you’re calling it off doesn’t mean there can’t be a sex ritual,” he pointed out. Grigg laughed and tossed an arm over his shoulders and Trent settled against his side like he’d always been there.

“Have whatever ritual you want,” Quentin said. He pushed his hair back from his face, noticing for maybe the last time that it was shorter, softer, different. “I don’t think I need it.”

~

“Your room is closer,” Eliot snapped, taking long strides through the castle and not looking back to see if Quentin was still following him. Quentin hurried through the halls as best he could, stopping for deep breaths occasionally, trying to shift his own weight into a better position. Eliot’s shoulders were sleek, not built like Riory’s, and Quentin was a solid guy.

Eliot didn’t offer to help. He left dusty boot prints across the glossed-clean floors, the tails of his coat snapping behind him.

Quentin’s room was closer. He should have left his body there, Quentin thought, dropping it down on the bed; he winced as his head and arms bounced. But he’d been anxious.

Over by his chair, Eliot was stripping off his outer layers, leaving them in a dirty pile on the dirty upholstery. He glanced at Quentin with dark, furious eyes, then poked him in the chest, digging the tip of his finger in. “You know, I deserve a lot of credit,” he said. “It’s not just any man who would go out into Fillory and play dick detective even though it was stupid and a waste of his time. It’s not just any man who would do that for someone he’s not even dating. And then, to come back here and you’re still worried about preserving your body in case I had wasted all this time just to let you rot?”

Quentin found himself holding Eliot’s wrist, not applying a lot of pressure, but to stop Eliot from poking him so hard—poking himself so hard—that he left a mark. “It was more about being worried you wouldn’t make it back in time,” he said quietly. “I swear. And I didn’t.”

He took a deep breath. It wasn’t easy to play your cards with Eliot; he was just as likely to snipe them out of your hand as let you show them. But, “I didn’t realize you were going to take what I said about not getting into a relationship so hard. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Eliot tried to tug his hand back. “It’s not that you hurt me, it’s just that I wasn’t expecting you to side-piece me after,” he said sharply. “I thought we were—” He cut himself off and sighed, his arm relaxing. Quentin stopped holding his wrist in place, letting their hands rest at their sides.

He didn’t let go.

They watched each other for a minute, eyes locked; it was easier and easier, somehow, to see Eliot in Trentley’s unfamiliar face. “I was just surprised,” Eliot said more quietly. “After a whole life with you, after everything—well, just after.”

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said. “I really didn’t mean to—”

“I know. You never really mean to, do you, Q? But strange things just keep happening around you anyway.” Eliot crooked a smile up at Quentin, not a real one; even in someone else’s face, it turned out, Quentin knew the difference between Eliot’s smiles.

“It’s enough to make me wonder what your real superpower is,” Eliot said. “It probably has something to do with probability. We should ask Alice to research it when she gets back.” He took a step away, gently pulling his wrist out of Quentin’s looser grip.

Quentin took a deep breath. He was pathetic, and brave, and Eliot had fully committed himself to a stupid quest on his behalf, just to make him feel better. Eliot had made fun of him for trying to clear the air about exclusivity. Eliot had wanted to share his bed with him, and done research for him, and been so confident every step of the way that Quentin had nothing to worry about.

Eliot loved him. Across multiple lifetimes, Eliot had loved him.

It was time to stop being afraid of that.

He searched Eliot’s eyes. “I did realize something while you were gone,” he said. “I realized that I love--"

Out beyond Quentin’s cursed, immovable curtains, the sun set. The Lover’s Moon rose and Quentin, caught mid-sentence, fell.

~

It was more difficult than Quentin had expected it to be, going back to his own body. The room spun for a long time, shapes blurring around him. He heard the door close as Trent left, heard it open again an eternity later, and knew Eliot was with him. Opening his eyes made him feel sick to his stomach, so he kept them closed, hauling painful breath after breath into his lungs.

But it couldn’t last forever. Eventually he gasped a deep breath in and felt better. He tried again. He opened his eyes.

His _own_ eyes.

Eliot looked down at him, concerned. He was fully himself for the first time in weeks, no trace of Trent at all: his own sardonic brows, his cleft chin, his wide thin mouth quirked at an inquisitive angle, his short dark lashes over light brown eyes. His hair stood up in spikes and flopping whirls; Quentin had never put in enough product when he had Eliot’s hair, and had run his hands through it too often. But he looked good. He looked like Eliot.

Quentin was so glad to be looking at him.

“I guess my romantic humours weren’t unbalanced after all,” he said.

Eliot’s face softened with relief. “You idiot,” he murmured, ducking his head down closer to Quentin’s. “You absolute fool. I told you they weren’t.”

“But you didn’t tell me you were in love with me,” Quentin pointed out.

“Same thing,” Eliot said, and kissed him.

~

“Wait, wait,” Quentin said when a thought broke through a lifetime later. He pushed Eliot back a little. “While I was unconscious—you came to in the library, right? Did you see who left with who? Margo and I have a bet.”

Eliot snorted, nuzzling against his neck; it tickled, and Quentin shivered, which made Eliot hum. “Did I seem like I cared? No, I didn’t see who left with whom. All I know is they’re all gone, and you’re here. Come on, kiss me again.”

“Okay, well, but the deal is,” Quentin said, wiggling free. “The _deal_ is that Margo and I have been watching the magical bachelor show all week while you were gone, and we’re kind of invested—”

“Kind of invested,” Eliot muttered, rolling his eyes. “Fine. Fine. Grigg and Trent found each other. Louisett left with Flickerson. Teatree disappeared with Margo, Riory, and Insta Cindy, and I believe that Riory won the bet.”

“Louisett and Flickerson?” Quentin shook his head. “That will never last. What were they thinking? Margo is going to be so smug tomorrow though. We had a side bet about who would win the bet, and she picked Riory. Do you think that—”

“Quentin.”

“I’m not avoiding anything,” Quentin explained. “I’m just having a lot of feelings about being back in my body right now, and it’s going to take me a moment to process, all right?”

“All right,” Eliot said, and he sat up on the side of the bed. He crossed his legs and leaned back on his arms, head tilted back to look at the ceiling. He had lost most of the buttons on his shirt, at some point, and his pants had disappeared. Quentin vaguely remembered having magicked them away. “Let me know when you’re done processing.”

Quentin sat and thought about it. It was so good to look at Eliot, really look at him. His long, fine-boned fingers were beautiful. The soft, golden light of the lamps picked out caramel highlights in his dark hair, and shadowed the hollows of his cheekbones. He had the faintest hint of stubble. Quentin had dressed him terribly, trying to aim for Eliot’s usual aesthetic and ending up with something like a pirate captain visiting a bordello instead, which actually. All right, so he’d dressed Eliot appropriately.

Eliot. Mercurial and steady and viciously defensive and protective and icy cold and warm.

What was Quentin getting into?

It took a few more minutes to test his own body. He had to stand up and walk around. Hands: check. Feet: check. Arms and legs and stomach: check. He pushed his hands through his hair and it fell like normal around his fingers, which felt weird because it wasn’t Eliot’s hair falling through Eliot’s fingers. He sniffed and could smell Eliot’s soap but underneath it, his own skin, a faint scent he might never have noticed if he hadn’t spent two weeks smelling like someone else.

Everything was at the right height and perspective, slightly lower to the ground. He did a squat, swung his arms side to side, bit his lip.

He thought about Eliot biting his lip.

“I’m done processing,” Quentin announced, and Eliot looked down, raised an eyebrow, and stood.

Eliot could loom again now, Quentin noticed with appreciation. He used his height and the length of his arms, the broadness of his shoulders, to herd Quentin back towards the bed. He was smiling fondly, dangerously, down at him.

“I can’t believe you planned an orgy in a library.” Eliot leaned down, caging Quentin in.

Quentin smiled up at him. “I can’t believe you didn’t want to participate in an orgy in a library.”

“Next time, make it a little more _exclusive_ ,” Eliot said, and tackled him, laughing, to the mattress.

~

Quentin bit his lip and shifted; maybe it was just that it had been a few weeks since they had fucked, or maybe it was the experience of being out of his body, but everything felt bigger, more, and that included Eliot’s fingers inside him.

“Look at you,” Eliot murmured in his ear. “Which reminds me. If you want it, I found a spell.”

Quentin grabbed his shoulders, hauled him closer; he’d been thinking about Eliot’s freckles since Eliot had told him to feel free. He wanted to bite them. “I want it,” he said, half-delirious. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this?”

Eliot laughed. “No, no. I mean, it took a few extra days on the road, but I found a spell that will let us kind of, you know. We could see through each other’s eyes for a while. It’s not like the Worship Moon, we wouldn’t swap bodies—but kind of. If you were interested. Since we lost our chance.”

Before this, Quentin would have said no. He wouldn’t have wanted to see himself through the eyes of someone he was fucking; he didn’t need to know what he looked like when he orgasmed, or what his dick looked like from underneath, or what his ass looked like when someone was slowly opening him up. But he’d seen himself through Eliot’s eyes now. He’d seen what Eliot saw.

It only seemed fair to return the favor.

“Next time,” he said. “I owe you two weeks of worship.”

Eliot leaned back and looked down at Quentin with wide eyes. His cheekbones were flushed, and his mouth was red, wet. Quentin thought for a moment about pushing Eliot back down between his legs, getting Eliot to suck him again, slowly and thoughtfully, the way he did, like every time was an experiment and he was collecting data on how exactly to best tear Quentin apart.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Eliot said, delighted. “Q, I do believe you do owe me two weeks of worship. I won’t collect entirely in deviant sexual acts, but—”

“I would if I were you. And I’ve been you.” Quentin hooked his leg behind Eliot, hauling him close, delighting in the feel of his own muscles and bones and nerves and tendons working together to get him what he wanted, which was Eliot inside him, now. “I’ve felt what your body is like. You could collect on two deviant sexual acts before breakfast. Oh. Oh—”

Eliot hummed, watching himself; he’d pressed the head of his cock to Quentin’s ass, and Quentin was positive that the Worship Moon had changed something, because Eliot inside of him felt more overwhelming this time than the first time, and the first time had been life altering.

But Eliot looked overwhelmed too. Quentin had never seen him so flushed, so undone. When he slid fully inside Quentin, hips resting against his ass, he closed his eyes and dropped his head, struggling to hold on.

Quentin wrapped an arm around him. The position was familiar, not from this lifetime—they’d both been too guarded, he realized, in this lifetime—but from before. They’d liked it like this, face to face, twined together. How could he have been afraid that this feeling wouldn’t follow them from one life to the next?

“I don’t think anything that feels like this could be considered deviant,” Eliot said, opening his eyes. “This is what Ember and Umber meant when they asked for worship. This is. This is—"

“Yeah,” Quentin said, and held him close, and loved him.

~


End file.
